


Beg the waves (to bring you back your love)

by yawning_inF



Series: whumptober 2020 [3]
Category: Outer Banks (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death(s), Child Abuse, Child Death, Dont ask for I dont know, Drug Use, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Memory Loss, Not beta read [sighs in terrible sloppy english], Suicide, What is this really, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27107860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yawning_inF/pseuds/yawning_inF
Summary: The Maybank family hadn't always been this small. There were days when two children would run around creating chaos, and two parents would comfort them when they fell. There were... until there weren't.Or, imagining JJ's past in the worst way possible: by giving him love only to take it right back
Relationships: JJ & pain
Series: whumptober 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951417
Kudos: 7
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Beg the waves (to bring you back your love)

**Author's Note:**

> Whumptober2020 days 13. Drowning-Freeform, 18. Memory Loss (Altprompt), 19. Mourning Loved One, 20. Water (Altprompt), 27. Extreme Weather

Her golden curls flailed furiously with the raging wind- her pristine fingers, young and soft reached out to feel the rain. Gently, uncurling her small fist she let the cold baptism caress her palm, trace the cut she had acquired the other day, small child left on her own with noone to tell her not to play with knives.

Her brother had found her only after the blade hd clattered on the kitchen floor. He'd tried to soothe her sobs as she cried at the stinging that overwhelmed her senses, and perhaps at the unpleasant sight of blood seeping through the slit flesh.

The sound of the raindrops clashing against every exposed surface was deafening. Lorie smiled, her cheeks still wet. It was loud enough to drown out the shouting and yelling reverberating around their small house. Cautiously enough she extended the rest of her arm out of the awning, sniffing, and giggling once she registered the way the water tickled her as it run down her skin.

She turned around to call mommy and tell her she liked the feeling of rain gently poking at her hand, but then remembered her mommy was too busy fighting with dad.

After a bit of unnecessary pondering Lorie sloppily wiped the dried outline of tears around her eyes by stretching out the short sleeve of her blue, linen shirt. Her mom had insisted that the shirt was 'cobalt' but Lorie had protested, providing the strong argument: 'blue is blue'.

Her mom had taught her how to tell apart the colors, and Lorie knew all the blues better than the back of her hand, even if she wasn't as inclined to use those complicated words that felt like a beehive on her tongue. Next on her learning list were the yellows, after her personal request. Lorie admired those beautiful flowers painted on the canvas, and mostly the bright daffodils and sunflowers, composed of wonderful yellows that always seeped onto her mother's hands and clothes.

She wondered then, under the cloudy stars and curtains of water, what the red tint that her father's face assumed when he was screaming at the top of his lungs at mom was called. Just like he'd been doing when Lorie stepped outside to marvel at the raindrops with eyes full of pain and wonder. She calmed herself by entertaining the notion that she wouldn't remember these early years of her life by the time she went to school. An idea that had been instilled in her head by every grown up she asked what they remembered of the time they were five, like her. She pressed and asked but she only ever got the same, repeated answer.

"It just happens"

If she was honest with herself, she would rather only forget the times her parents argued, and keep the rest of her memories. Even better if she could blackmail JJ with embarrassing stories only she could possibly recall. With a bit of contemplation she concluded that she probably wouldn't remember which of the memories she wanted to forget, so the subject was dismissed.

As for the red shade she couldn't name? Lorie was sure her mom and she would have found more time to get past the yellows and onto the reds had mommy been with her children more instead of locking herself in the bathroom for hours on end. JJ had told her that he saw their mom one time she forgot to shut the door behind her, reaching for a small box, like the one they keep their toothpicks in, only opaque. Lorie refused to believe him when he whispered in her ear that he caught glimpse of her pouring something from the box into her open palm and gulping it down, almost frantically.

"You're dumb" she had articulated. "Why on earth would mom eat a toothpick? That's wood!"

JJ had shrugged at that, leaning in conspiratorially once again.

"Maybe it wasn't a toothpick"

"Well. That doesn't change the fact that you're dumb" she had declared, sticking her tongue out at him.

JJ had squinted. "Are you kidding me? You're a literal baby"

"No, _you_ are a baby!" she'd whined.

JJ's shit eating grin had been beyond exasperating when he would next speak.

"That's what a baby would say"

Given she couldn't think of anything to say that would successfully counter his claims she had simply scrunched up her nose and pouted.

She wasn't a _baby_! Babies couldn't even talk. They were completely and utterly useless. Lorie wasn't useless.

Dad had come inside right after, planting tender kisses on both his children's foreheads. Lorie had begrudgingly let him ruffle her hair before proceeding to whine about her brother, who denied ever saying anything.

Dad's offering of chocolate had most likely prevented world war three from happening inside their home.

Or perhaps _delayed._

Now he was the one wielding the hatchet. As metaphorically as that was said, the insults and furious screams hurled back and forth between her parents, were loud and poignant enough to obliterate a mountain. Sharp thorns embedded in her heart, forcing it to clench. Lorie was desperately trying to distract herself by thinking anything else but the noise was eager to point back to the ongoing havoc, keeping her firmly on the brink of tears.

The toddler realised she was still standing on the porch. What had once been a soft drizzle had soon evolved into a storm. Light tentacles and capillaries were embroidered on the night sky for a swift moment, illuminating the tempestuous ocean in front of her. A pair of pale blue eyes drank in the sight with amazement before the thunder caught up with its brother light. Lorie flinched and jumped back in surprise and fright at the bloodcurdling rumble that tore open the skies.

She wished she could run to her dad, for him to scoop her up in the safety of his arms while lovingly murmuring reassurances in her ear. She wished he wasn't as menacing as the storm and out of self that night and most other nights lately, and JJ could mock her all he wanted for seeking out comfort.

Lorie cautiously took a step out of the porch and her freshly shed tears blended in with the rain, washed away. The water was harshly battering her skin as she emerged from out the awning but she let it, with no recoil.

Where the drops touched her they melted into her skin, and even though the air was cool and the water cold, Lorie liked the warmth it brought to her chest, and she didn't mind shivering a bit.

Lorie glanced at the sea right as another lightning gifted its light to the towering waves crashing back down on the water, dancing and spinning in the craziest rythms of the wind.

The thunder's clap frightened her more this time and elicited a feeble whine from her strawberry lips. The feeling of the wet grass and sand beneath her feet and between her toes easily distracted her though, and soon she was dancing to the same tune as the waves.

Her imagination was starting to awaken, as she felt the beautiful melodies sung by mermaids swimming with the tide and braiding colorful seashells and shiny pebles into eachother's silky hair.

Lorie danced, and spoke with the mermaids, and she found herself dancing on the edge of the water when yet another thunder stopped the music short. With it the daughters of the sea dissolved into foam, and Lorie realised she wanted to swim with them.

Cautiously extending one foot she gently dipped her toes in the icy waters. She jerked her foot away in shock, only to let it back inside, until the cold no longer felt prickly to her skin.

Lorie turned around one more time, glancing guiltily at their house where her parents would continue fighting, perhaps for the rest of the night, until one of them stormed off and the other drowned their pain in.. something else. JJ was lost somewhere in that house and Lorie considered getting back inside to get him for a brief moment.

JJ would want to see the mermaids too, of that she was sure. Deciding against it she looked down at her feet, soaked in water up to the ankles. The rest of her wasn't in any way dry, but Lorie was ready to be engulfed in the sweet sensation of the endless sea.

Before taking another step towards the deep, an oddly shaped rock shined in her eye. She picked it up hurriedly for if she had wasted any time it would have been lost forever within the next sonorous crash of waves on shore.

Opening her clasp Lorie inspected the strange rock, shaped almost like a mythical creature's fang, or perhaps it belonged to a gigantic shark, ready to tear through flesh and tissue. The little girl shuddered slightly at the thought: she never deemed those animals dear. Nonetheless, it reminded her of JJ, for her brother was more times than often fascinated by sharks, beaming like the sun whenever he stumbled upon an opportunity to share his passion for them.

Lorie trapped the small rock securely in her clasp as a smile graced her features. She would give it as a gift to her brother when she got back inside.

She took a step towards the blurred line of the horizon and her knees were met with the resilience of the water pushing back against her movement. Her linen blouse flowed gracefully with the drifting seaweeds, and as it sank deeper into the blue moone could tell apart the difference in the hues.

Thunder struck again, but Lorie wasn't afraid anymore.

The mermaids would protect her.

They promised it would all be okay.

She took another step, clinging to the rock softly grazing the inside of her palm.

The waves devoured her, but Lorie wasn't afraid.

The mermaids were waiting for her.

***

JJ was curled up in a small ball behind his bed when the shouting stopped. His limbs didn't want to be untangled yet, so the boy was still trembling beside the furniture.

JJ knew those rare moments of calm couldn't be trusted.

The opposite side of the bunk he shared with his sister was empty, save for a few discarded toys the toddler had picked and never put back.

( _She never would, who knew they'd be forever useless_ )

The opposite side- _empty_.

JJ got lost in his mind for just a second, thoughtfully staring at their bunk.

_Lorie_. Lorie wasn't there.

Which meant that his sister was all alone, probably tangled in the mess she was to young to understand, but old enough to realise.

He had to find her. Before.. Before something.. happened.

JJ got up and walked through the doorway, exiting the safety of his room and unwillingly shivering at the thought of having to confront the mocking chill venturing throughout the rest of the house.

He ran across the corridor, and ran to each and every one of the rooms -except the ones where his parents were, but even by peering just over the door the entirety of the space was relayed to his sight. Their house wasn't that big after all.

They were all empty of his sister.

JJ sprinted outside, passed the green in a blur without even registering the tingling on his bare feet, only hearing the dry echoes of his own shouts.

He turned to every corner, looked every way and in every single one of their favourite hiding spots, always calling out her name with the dread slowly creeping in. Eyes glowing bright amidst the darkness, voices lost beneath the thunder.

JJ collapsed to his small, bruised knees and let the rain wash his face all over.

The blonde strands of hair stuck to his forehead. Lowering his head to face his legs sunken in the mud, he started weeping despondently.

The coast was empty of his sister.

***

They searched the island for three nights and three days, to no avail. Father, mother and son, and everything between them seemed to be perfect in front of the enormous concern of JJ's sister missing.

"We.. found her" told them one of the fishermen on the fourth day, standing on their doorstep in the tender hours of the night. Him standing with his normally proud back hunched and his hat residing gently in his hands shouldn't have been a good sign, JJ knew better than that.

"Come with me"

His pensive eyes, hardened like a storm, stared deeply but comfortingly into JJ's own. It wasn't enough to calm the panic rising up to his throat. The man himself probably knew it wouldn't be.

Their little family was dying to fill the gaping hole in their middle, finally _know_ -cause ignorance wasn't and generally isn't a bliss, not when the people you love may hardly be alive- but also dreaded the prospect of becoming even littler. A prospect so sickening yet ever more likely.

The man lead them away, and further away, until JJ wasn't sure where they were, what with all the twists and turns.

He surely didn't like not knowing anymore.  
Soon there, along with the rising sun stood yet another man dressed in yellow.

If he saw them, if he talked to them, JJ wouldn't know.

"They found her" were the words that breathlessly fell off someone's lips.

If they were his own, JJ wouldn't know. The sight was being ingrained in his mind for eternity, but still it all felt like a hazy dream sunken deeply into murky horror, clinging to every single pore and cell.

_They found her body on the shore._

Cause there, on the not so golden sand littered with whatever remnants of the objects dancing with the storm, there, laid his sister. Cold and pale, her soft lips bruised, algae entangled in her hair.

That couldn't be his sister.

JJ wanted to run, run far far away, until he was far enough to forget that it was true. That it was all true. Cause it couldn't be.

His sister couldn't be dead.

They were supposed to visit the aquarium together so he could show her how she knew nothing about sea wildlife. She had promised. She was supposed to be there with him.

His sister couldn't be dead.

They had yet to grow up together. She had yet to join him at school, and be annoyed that all her teachers already knew her. JJ had yet to start walking her home at noon.

They'd yet to grow up together. They'd yet to attend eachother's graduation, each others engagement, each others marriage. They'd had to become uncle and aunt.

And perhaps they never would have done all those things. But they would have grown up together, and grown old together.

Like siblings are supposed to do.

JJ wanted to run, but the sight kept him frozen on his place, while drawing him closer like a magnet. He didn't move, not to escape the awful truth, neither to let it settle in. He simply watched, as his parents darted towards their dead daughter.

He collected the memories of their plangent cries, almost naturally elicited from their bodies as they collapsed on the same sand as their daughter. Holding a hand that would never hold theirs back, caressing a cheek that used to be so soft and young, but only felt like prickly ice beneath their trembling fingers.

So JJ stood, and watched as his parents cried and yelled, cursing cruel fate, cursing the wind, cursing the storm.

He watched, alone, as they weeped and mourned the loss of their child -maybe forgetting all about the one that was left. The only comfort kind enough to be granted to him was the hand of the first fisherman squeezing his shoulder reassuringly and nearly.. solemnly, but JJ didn't feel when it arrived nor when it was retracted.

In the daughter's grasp was something held securely so, that they had to pry it off the ghastly clutches of death. The parents' cries interrupted the discovery, rebounding around the pit of JJ's stomach, so he preferred to follow with his eyes the object that sunk back in the damp from rain and teardrops sand.

His feet moved him before he could order them to, the sand got beneath his fingernails before he could of known why they were in contact with the ground.

The small rock, smooth and as comforting as a rock could be, resembled a fang. It was the last thing his sister had ever gripped, even though JJ had yet to fully comprehend it, and perhaps he never would.

It was the last thing his sister had ever held, and it was meant for him.

***

It wasn't until JJ woke up one day and dressed in black that all his hopeless delusions of his sister returning to them came crashing down, shattered into sharp fragments of porcelain prodding painfully at his heart, and at his lungs, as he struggled to breathe despite the unbearable weight on his chest.

He glanced at the fang shaped pebble residing on his sister's desk.

His… His _dead_ sisters desk.

JJ set his jaw and tried to stop his lip from quivering. He needed to do something.

He needed to remember her. He needed to honor her, in a way he saw fit. So JJ took his sister's final gift and wrapped around it leathern string, after time and time of trying and failing to see well enough through welled up eyes an craft the pendant.

Finally the gift was hanging loosely around his neck. It made no sense to be paired with his most expensive suit, but fashion was nowhere near being on JJ's ever-growing list of fears and concerns.

If by any means Lorie's ghost could see him from above, JJ needed her to feel as loved and appreciated as she was. No kind of petty sibling rivalry could have ever neutralized his unfaltering love for his sister, that much went without saying.

How could he have known, it wasn't written in the stars for his sister to be buried that day.

When he walked inside the bathroom to wash his face from all the pathways carved by boiling tears, tearing through his trachea was not the blood curdling shriek he would have expected to be prompted by the sight, but a week and shallow yelp.

_No. No, please no._

_Please no. Please not his mom._

"Dad!" JJ called despondently, as his feet flew over the scattered pills.

His father didn't answer, and if he didn't listen he couldn't come and help.

"Mom!" he screamed then, voice breaking, shouting more and more frantically, more and more helplessly as the lack of response from the woman lying on the hard and cold tiles began reciting all their dreadful implications.

JJ couldn't lose his mom too.

JJ shook his mother's body and screamed and cried, yet she was little more than a lifeless lump of flesh. The lump wasn't going to paint another painting of the ocean, she wasn't going to kiss his cheek goodnight the next and all the other nights, she wasn't going to play with him whenever his friends couldn't meet him.

She wasn't going to love him anymore.

His father never came inside on time.

His mother never did wake up.

They saw them both, mother and daughter, goodbye on a lovely sunday. They were buried in the same tomb, so the name Maybank was engraved twice on the same piece of molding stone.

His father was more distant than he'd ever been, at the time his son needed him more than ever in his short life. JJ held onto the pendant hanging from his neck all while foreign faces he'd never seen smile at him before shared their condolences. So full of pity, yet their compassion would soon prove to have been shallow.

The soft texture of the rock filled him with content and a warmth he didn't know he was lacking, nor needing. Or more precisely, he did, but was too afraid to ever admit it.

He kept on feeling the reassurance of the pebble and the leathern thread securely wrapped around it beneath his shaky fingers on the ride back home from the cemetery. Long, drawn out silence, tense in a way that it never should have been. Uncomfortable in a way that was no longer justified.

His sister was gone.

His mother was gone.

Suddenly his father was all JJ had left.

Only his father didn't love him anymore.

Not in any way that would matter.

***

Life wasn't the same in the months after the burial. JJ wished and hoped and prayed that it would all be alright, that he was simply trapped in a bad dream. When he wasn't begging the stars for a miracle he was crying himself to sleep.

Crying into sheets and pillows, for there was no shoulder for him to cry on.

The father had begun drowning all the pain and sorrow in alcohol and drugs. It never fully disappeared, and each time it came back stronger, rendering him more and more unstable, like a growling volcano ready to erupt at any given moment.

In his rare moments of clarity he begged himself to realise that all the problems worsened, that he had to _stop_. His brain always rejected this sanity for the sake of the temporary numbness.

His mind craved destruction just a bit more powerfully than it did salvation.

JJ was left on his own most of the time. And when he wasn't, he would wish he were.

The father's mind told him that his own son was the one to blame for his wife's and daughter's deaths, and he -lost in the blurry whirlpool the substances created, believed it.

Explaining the cuts and bruises to his peers and teachers was difficult, at first, but soon they all lost interest in JJ's many tragedies. Bad things and accidents happen all the time after all, and it's easy to get used to that when those same bad things aren't happening to you. It's comfortable enough to ignore the patterns, lift off your remorse by reassuring your self that if anything was going on, _they would have asked for help_. JJ wouldn't blame them for that, but it still stung when his injuries didn't matter enough for a single question to be raised.

It was alright. ( _It wasn't_ ). JJ supposed it wasn't such a big deal after all. Everyone is hurting in their own way.

It was getting worse each passing week.

More and more bruises, more and more dried blood, more swollen eyes, and above it all, more pain. Always pain, not so much physical, but the alarming ache of his own dad hurting him. The person who was supposed to help him heal.

Nothing goes as it's supposed to go, JJ had already figured, because that's how it's supposed to be.

One morning when JJ woke up was to grow different from all others before it, without ever losing reality's painful monotony. Perhaps leaving behind a fraction of it, but at the same time making everything _worse_. His father returned home early that day, and he'd already been wasted by afternoon. JJ couldn't have predicted what was about to happen, or he'd tried harder to steer clear of his path framed by empty bottles.

Luke Maybank was filled to the brim with unresolved sorrow and bitterness. As he was -and is- unable to handle or even process those emotions, they found a way to manifest through anger. Unjustified rage moving his strings and turning him against his own son.

So… that day..

That day the first unprompted fist collided with little JJ's skin to find him awfully off balance. The boy was swaying for an eternity, yet the blood began to pour from the back of his head after his fall in less than slivers of a second.

How he was carried to the hospital, how he spent weeks, or even months with an IV strapped to his forearm and eyes spitefully shut, he wouldn't know. Nobody bothered to tell him what had happened when he first woke up from his coma. Nobody that he remembered.

Amidst the blurry memories swimming around and mockingly further away whenever he attempted to reach them, were the most poignant of his life. Perhaps deep down JJ himself knew that, cause he never truly tried to help them resurface.

His mind was better off missing half his tragedies. Safer. But, perhaps to make sense of itself, the mind let go of all the anamnesis tied to the most traumatic events it was so desperate to leave behind.

So then JJ would admire the countless paintings and ignore the faint tingling of emotion they stirred inside him, cause his mom was never there. She left them, left him when he was just a baby.

JJ would touch the stone gently lying on his skin and think of mellow, faded days, and never, never take it off, but he also never had a sister. The pebble meant nothing to his mind anymore, only to his heart, cause the heart always remembers, washing him in bittersweet nostalgia for something he would never truly grasp.

When his dad would force him to look at the gravestones, slapped and kicked him to make him remember, hollow eyes forever saw right through the stone and behind it, stubbornly refusing to accept the truth lying in front of them. And they never would.

Suddenly his father was all JJ _ever_ had.

Only his father didn't love him.

And to JJ, that was entirely his own fault.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading!!! It would mean so much to me if you'd tell me what you think!! Love yall <3


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